Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Bars Must Speak to the Wanderer

"Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting
and banal. It requires ignorance—nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city—as one loses oneself in a forest—that calls for a quite different
schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars
must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest." Walter Benjamin, "Berlin Chronicle"

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No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life in Baseball Writing (forthcoming), Field Recordings from the Inside (essays), This Must Be Where My Obsession With Infinity Began (essays), Conversations With Greil Marcus, AC/DC’s Highway to Hell (33 1/3 Series), Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found, Installations (National Poetry Series), and Sweat: The Story of The Fleshtones, America’s Garage Band. ✸✸ Music Columnist for The Normal School. ✸✸ Five-time "Notable Essay" selection at Best American Essays. ✸✸ Associate Professor of English at Northern Illinois University.

BOOKS

Field Recordings from the Inside

Soft Skull Press

“The collection’s 18 essays do what the best music writing is supposed to do—they make the reader care, regardless of whether they enjoy, or are familiar with, the material being written about; I was mostly willing to follow Bonomo anywhere he wanted to go.” Los Angeles Review of Books

This Must Be Where My Obsession with Infinity Began

Orphan Press

"Joe Bonomo seems to have a Cornell box for each difficult, lyrical moment he remembers. He is a theorist of the self's construction out of the past, full of resistance and the heartbreaking urge to yield." David Lazar

Conversations With Greil Marcus

University Press of Mississippi

"Marcus's knowledge of music and his widespread interests in related topics make this a delight and a real page-turner." The Big Takeover

AC/DC's Highway to Hell

Bloomsbury

"One of the five most important books about AC/DC." Jesse Fink, author of Bon: The Last Highway

Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found

Bloomsbury

"I've read most of the books about him and will now put Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found on the indispensable list. It's one of the best books about the man and his music." Lincoln Journal Star

Installations

Penguin

Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America's Garage Band

Bloomsbury

"Joe Bonomo has written a fine book: a book not only about a band or times passed, but also about the rare virtue of endurance." Nick Tosches

IN TRANSLATION

Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found

Camion Blanc

The Fleshtones: Histoire d'un Groupe de Garage Américain

Camion Blanc

ANTHOLOGIES

The Spirit of Disruption: Landmark Essays from The Normal School

Outpost19

Brief Encounters: An Anthology of Short Nonfiction

Norton

Clash By Night

CityLit Press

The Birth of Rock and Roll

Dust-to-Digital

How To Write About Music

Bloomsbury

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice